Study & Create

The University of North Texas Libraries invite applications for the 2016 UNT Special Collections Research Fellowship. Research in special collections is relevant to studies in a variety of disciplines including history, journalism, political science, geography, fine art, art history and American studies. We encourage applicants to think creatively about new uses for special collections. Preference will be given to applicants who demonstrate the greatest potential for publication and the best use of special collections at UNT Libraries.

Project Title

The Victorian Miniature Book

Project Description

During the nineteenth-century, publishers began to produce a profusion of miniature books, including thumb bibles, alphabets, almanacs, fairy tales and books of history. Despite their minute proportions (miniature books typically measure less than three inches in size), these volumes functioned in the Victorian period as imaginative tokens of expansive knowledge. Using the extensive collection of miniature books and related archival materials in the University of North Texas Special Collections, I show how the miniature book re-enchants familiar works and transports the reader from the dull world of full-sized reality into an expansive realm of minute possibility.

Biography

Laura Forsberg is a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate in English at Harvard University. Her dissertation on “The Miniature and Victorian Literature” seeks to restore size as a major category of the imagination in the Victorian age by examining miniature paintings, dolls, fairies, microscopes and miniature books in the literature and culture of the period. While Ms. Forsberg’s primary interest is in the Victorian novel, she also studies and teaches children’s literature, book history, poetry and medievalism. She has articles being published this year in both Victorian Studies and SEL: Studies in English Literature 1600-1900. She currently lives in Austin, Texas and works as an adjunct faculty member at Concordia University.